A Tale of the West

A Tale of the West

By M. Anderson

There is a resonance in the stream.

Tell me; do you hear it?

It pulses and hums, washing over all things in the melody that was foretold, and I have heard the patterns.

Time passes. Stars are born and die, much as mortals are and each dances to the melody of the resonance, deaf to the music, but dancing to it all the same.

All that is has been, and all that will be, will be again.

Save, that is, for ripples.

Ripples in the Stream.

The Prophecy of the Eldari; opening lines.

Chapter I

Cassie Reynolds wiped the sweat off her brow as she attended to the last tables of the day. She smiled a quiet sort of smile as the sun's last beams of light kissed her cheeks through the open window at the other side of the room. The glass was shoddy work at best so as the dying rays of the western sun hit the muddied glass it shot out like molten fire cascading over crystals. It never ceased to take Cassie's breath away.

She smiled because it had been a good day. Only three drunken brawls, a half-dozen broken mugs and only one idiot trying to put his hands where they had no business. In the broken and crumbling city of Medalan, in a run down tavern at the edge of the world that was indeed as good a day as Cassie Reynolds could have hoped for.

She moved about the room humming a sweet nothing to herself as she turned down the lamps for the evening. The last ghost of the sun had long since left the Mired Cauldron and with each lamp she turned down the silky blanket of darkness became more and more prevalent. The dark would not impede her work. Cassie had closed the small tavern more times than she could count in the three years since the owner had died and left it to her; she being the last of the staff loyal or desperate enough to stick around.

Life in Medalan was unpleasant at the best of times, and most folk just didn't have the sand for it.

It was Cassie's place now, and she loved it broken and beat down as it was. She remembered the gash in the south wall where a brigand had met his end at the tip of a hunting knife, or the hole in the one of the round oak tables where a small bomb had gone off as a result of a dice game gone wrong. They were ugly, traumatic scars attached to equally distasteful memories, but on the whole they made the Cauldron beautiful to Cassie.

The last of the lamps had been turned down and darkness encased the room in its gentle embrace. Cassie drew her pipe and some tobacco and began to make arrangements to light it up. She had become nauseated by the smell when she first encountered it some years ago. Over time however, like the rest of the Cauldron, she had grown to love it and now it seemed there was no other way to end a day, good or bad. She had no taste for liquor or ale or any other kind of spirit she had encountered and she reckoned that wasn't likely to change any time soon.

Once she had a decent light on her pipe she opened the door and propped it up with a chair. Besides her pipe, watching the town go to sleep might have been her favorite hobby after hours.

For the few desperate or crazy enough to stick it out in Medalan there was a special bond shared. On the edge of the world where resources were scant and business no better most days sticking it out alone wasn't really an option. Cassie spied Addle the crotchety old baker putting out his ovens and stacking his loaves of bread to be sold the next day. It was a well known secret that his fresh baked bread was always baked the night before and put on in the morning. None of his fellow shopkeepers would ever give up the old coot's secret so long as the bread they bought had a less granite like consistency than those offered in the stands.